The French violinist Ginette Neveu had a career both meteoric and tragic.

A child prodigy who made her concert debut aged seven, playing the Max Bruch concerto, she studied with Georges Enesco in Paris and Carl Flesch in Berlin and, at 16, won first prize in the Warsaw competition.

The much older David Oistrakh came second. Her Russian and American debuts followed.

Neveu refused to perform during the German occupation of France but, in the post-war years, she had the world at her feet.

After hearing her in New York, Virgil Thomson called her "unquestionably the greatest violinist there is and I will go so far as to claim that she is one of the greatest violinists of our time."

As a person she was extrovert, fond of swimming and ping-pong, while as a musician she was intense and totally dedicated to her art.

Her technique was flawless, if idiosyncratic, with an unusual manner of holding the bow.

She was killed in 1949, aged 30, in a plane crash on her way to perform in the US. Clutching her Stradivari, she "died as she lived, with the wheels of her life in full motion".

-Roger Moodiman, Marine Parade, Brighton